


Are you hungry?

by another_Hero



Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's 8 (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Disordered Eating, F/F, Food, it's just about food
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-20
Updated: 2018-07-20
Packaged: 2019-06-13 17:03:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15369222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/another_Hero/pseuds/another_Hero
Summary: Lou rolled her eyes, adding her whole head in for effect, and turned her face so it wasn’t facing Debbie anymore. “It’s so much work,” she said.Debbie raised her eyebrows. “Eating?”“Yeah,” said Lou. “You do it, and then in just a few hours you have to do it again.”(Lou did a bad job feeding herself while Debbie was in prison. Getting out, Debbie's worried but also has a job to do.)





	Are you hungry?

Lou was thinner. Lou was thinner and, by the time she’d scoped out her room at Lou’s place and found something more daytime to wear, Debbie was hungry. She had to take Lou into town to let her in on what the plan was, and they’d eat something while she talked about it, but she’d grab a snack here for the road. She went down into what passed for a kitchen here to scavenge.

She opened the apartment-sized fridge first. There were eggs in it, and there was mustard, and there was beer, and there was a carton of orange juice. She pulled that out and took the lid off, but it smelled sour. She opened a cabinet. Whiskey, gin, vermouth. The other cabinet—the kitchen was a small one—had flour and spices and a bag of gummy bears. She took them, but she still called, vaguely upward, “Hey honey?”

“Yes, darling?” Lou had always pronounced pet names sarcastically; Debbie said them in a voice that dared Lou to believe her. Though she’d acted the part, Debbie hadn’t been entirely sure how this reunion would go—less because of the prison, more because of the thing before that—so she was relieved to hear Lou respond like normal. Less relieved about the thinner-partner-no-food situation.

“Where’s all your food?”

Lou stepped into view on a balcony, the slip of her. “You didn’t exactly give me a lot of notice.”

“But you eat,” Debbie said. It shouldn’t have been a question

“Sure.” She said it casual as anything, with a smack of her gum. Then she disappeared for a moment, came back in a leopard print jacket that was definitely Debbie’s.

“So, uh, _what_ do you eat?”

“Oh, you know,” said Lou, pulling out her phone, “I usually grab something on the way to the club, or I order in.” Lou’s kitchen didn’t have any of the telltale signs of takeout—abandoned packets of plasticware and soy sauce, a stack of unused paper napkins—but Debbie wasn’t here to pick a fight. She’d never been, never even understood, the kind of person who could forget to eat all day, but Lou had to be reminded sometimes. Debbie guessed there had been no one to remind her in a little over six years. Here she was, bony enough to slide loosely into Debbie’s own clothes. She put the phone away and looked back up. “You look worried,” she said. “Snag in the plan already?”

Debbie sorted her face into a smooth smile. “No snags,” she said. “Wait ’til you hear it.”

 

The thing was, Debbie didn’t make the best caretaker. She had a gift for convincing people that her idea had been their own, but she wasn’t going to get out of this situation by treating Lou like a mark. And she couldn’t coax; their relationship wasn’t built on sincerity, and the last thing she needed was Lou convinced she’d gone soft before the job even started. At lunch she went the obnoxious route, literally stabbing a fork full of food at Lou’s mouth. She ordered dinner without asking Lou and ordered far too much, all things she knew Lou liked, and called her down and actually put the chopsticks in her hands. Lou sat and stood through the meal, perched on the counter, ran upstairs for a pair of socks when her feet got cold, but she ate. Debbie put the leftovers in the fridge in their boxes, made sure Lou saw her do it. She tried to act like it was nothing, never looked anxious at her partner. Right out of prison and worried, running a job and worried, that wasn’t the look she was going for. She paid attention, though.

 

The next morning, Debbie insisted on groceries, then made a show of helplessness. When asking Lou what she wanted just led to a vague shrug and the selection of a loaf of bread, Debbie said, “You’re the one who knows how to cook!” Lou raised her eyebrows. “I’ve been in prison,” Debbie said. “I need to eat.” She smirked as Lou selected tomatoes, sausages, butter. “What are you going to do with all those?” she asked, and Lou lit up describing the soup she would make that afternoon. Debbie, for her part, covered the cookies. Back at the loft, Lou minced garlic while Debbie started planning, and they ate together.

The next weeks were a whirlwind; most of their time was filled, and they were almost always surrounded by other people. Debbie kept takeout coming in, and a couple times a day she slid something in front of Lou without a word. She never took it without sarcasm—a wry “thanks, Mom,” an exaggerated “oh, baby, for me?”—but she took it.

 

But then the job was over, and Debbie, as usual after a big job, fell sick. “I’ll be better tomorrow,” she promised Lou when she stepped into Debbie’s room to retrieve a handful of the pens that had landed there.

Lou pressed her lips to Debbie’s forehead. “Sick,” she confirmed, and Debbie was too sleepy to point out that yes, she knew. “You want anything?” she said. “Ginger ale? Soup? Cold towel?”

“Sleep,” said Debbie, and Lou nodded.

“You sleep,” she said. Smiled a little. They’d been through this before. She left the door open, Debbie noticed, but she didn’t notice it much.

A few hours later, when Debbie opened her eyes, Lou was at the door with ginger ale and soup. She held them up. Debbie frowned.

“Eat something,” Lou said. “It doesn’t have to be a lot.”

Debbie nodded, sitting up, and Lou set the ginger ale on the table by the bed and brought the soup to her. She pulled a fat book from the shelf to set the bowl on, so it would be easier for Debbie to hold steady in her lap, and set it down on her legs. “Thanks,” Debbie said, though she didn’t especially care about the soup. “Did you make this?”

“God no,” said Lou, “I got it from the internet. I’ll make you chicken soup when you can enjoy it.”

Debbie nodded, ate three bites of it, and handed it back. Lou took the bowl downstairs.

When Debbie padded down a few hours later to an empty loft, she swallowed back the feeling that something had been taken from her. “Lou?” she called. But Lou didn’t come out of any room, and she wasn’t ready to go up the stairs, so she lay on the couch and slept until the door woke her up.

“Hey baby,” Debbie called without opening her eyes.

“Honey, I’m home.”

“Where did you go?” Debbie sounded sad to her own ears, but she was sick, she thought; Lou wouldn’t notice.

“I just got groceries,” Lou said, in a voice that sounded somehow like both an apology and a laugh.

“Oh,” said Debbie. “I’ll be better tomorrow.”

“Yeah,” said Lou, setting the bag down and walking over to sit next to her. “Do you want anything now? Some grapes?”

“I’m okay,” said Debbie, turning to push her face into the cushions.

“You want me to turn off the light?”

“Mm.”

Lou chuckled, and she lifted Debbie’s feet and sat on the couch underneath them, eating the small bunch of grapes herself. And Debbie woke to refuse an offer of tea and tell Lou about the dream she had where Rose drove an ice cream truck and threw the ice cream out the window and it stuck to the sky, and she woke to refuse an offer of an apple, and finally Lou offered to help her to bed.

“It’s night?” Debbie said.

“That’s what happens at the end of a day.”

“Have you been there the whole time?”

Lou didn’t answer, just slid Debbie’s legs off her lap and knelt by her head. “You want to go upstairs?”

Debbie gave a big sigh and took Lou’s hand, Lou walking backwards up the stairs to face her. At the door to her room, Lou let her go with a kiss on the forehead. “Tomorrow,” Debbie said, “I’m going to be better.”

 

“Are you better?” Lou asked from the door sometime in the morning. It was an unnecessary question; Debbie was dressed and sitting on top of the blankets, reading. “Are you hungry?”

“Starving.” Debbie put on coffee while Lou made pancakes, prancing around the kitchen in an absurd tiara they hadn’t yet fenced, then went back to bed. Debbie had drenched her pancakes in syrup and felt like a nap herself, but she was bored with sleeping, so she went out for a walk. She returned at midday with sandwiches from a deli for lunch and yelled up for Lou to eat with her. They spent the afternoon in the loft, Debbie with a computer in her lap, Lou sprawled with one leg reaching for the floor and the other bent up against the back of the couch, switching between a motorcycle magazine and Octavia Butler. Debbie certainly wasn’t looking _at_ her, but every few minutes when she glanced up from her work, it seemed Lou was melding further and further with the couch.

She went over and sat on Lou’s belly. Didn’t speak at first; she assumed Lou would make a noise about how heavy she was and shove her off. That accomplished, she perched on the other end of the couch and said, “You want dinner?”

“Already?”

“Well, most people eat several times a day.”

“We just had sandwiches like…”

“Seven hours ago?”

“Yeah.”

“So are you not hungry?”

Lou rolled her eyes, adding her whole head in for effect, and turned her face so it wasn’t facing Debbie anymore. “It’s so much work,” she said.

Debbie raised her eyebrows. “Eating?”

“Yeah,” said Lou. “You do it, and then in just a few hours you have to do it again.”

Debbie wasn’t always sure, with Lou, when they’d crossed the line from glib to sincere, and she didn’t want to push her too fast over this one. “You tried to feed me at least fifteen times yesterday.”

Quietly: “It’s easier when it’s for you.”

This, the tightening in Debbie’s chest, the sudden need to blink rapidly, the competing impulses to curl in on herself and reach for Lou, this was why they didn’t do sincere. How could she apologize for Lou’s bones, for six years of hunger, the physical consequences of her failure as a partner. At her silence, Lou looked up, and god, Debbie hadn’t gotten her face together at all. Lou sat up, alarmed, and slid forward on the couch towards her. Debbie shook her head, bent it.

“Are you all right?”

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re forgiven.”

Debbie nodded, looked sideways to further hide her face. Lou brushed a thumb over Debbie’s cheek, then left it there. This, this was not how they were with each other. Debbie hoped Lou wouldn’t remember and let go. Resisted the urge to apologize again. Looked up.

Lou pulled back without hurrying to let go, set her feet on the ground, stood up. “Are _you_ hungry?”

“Yeah. Yeah.”

“I’ll cook.”

“You need me to get anything?”

“I shopped yesterday.”

“Oh. I do remember that. You need me to—” Debbie didn’t know what to say after it, how to get back to ease.

Lou didn’t either, it seemed; she brushed her fingers over Debbie’s hair gently, then mussed it, and Debbie would have complained or made fun of her or both except the air was still full of the feeling of Lou’s hands on her face. “Think you can come into the kitchen without breaking anything?”

“Probably not.”

“I’ll show you.” Lou made her wash her hands, set out a cutting board and knife for her like she was a kid, and handed her a head of garlic. “All right,” she said, shucking the papery outer layers into a bowl on the counter, “you’re going to smash each clove with the flat of the knife”—she demonstrated—“and peel the skin off”—she put it in the bowl.

“For all of this?”

“I have faith in you.”

Debbie pulled off a clove, set the knife on it, set her hand on that.

“Okay,” Lou said before she could press down, “this is a knife. It’s very sharp.” She came over beside Debbie, put her hand over Debbie’s, and flattened it, lifting her fingers; Debbie copied. “Good,” she said.” Once Debbie had done it once, Lou turned back to the sink. Once Debbie had done them all, she looked around. Lou was doing something to some tomatoes, but she turned when Debbie did. “Now cut them into little pieces,” she said.

“How little?”

“Eh, however little you feel like. I’m not the boss of you.”

“Hold on, can I, just let me go get my phone and you can say that again.”

“Say what?”

Debbie played with the knife and the garlic until she got bored, and then she asked, “Why are you still here?”

“You’ll have to try harder than that to get rid of me.”

“Weren’t you planning a trip?”

“I figured you’d get sick. I’ll head out in a couple days. Maybe tomorrow.”

Oh. “Oh.”

Lou looked up, trademark smirk in place. “Something you’d like to say?”

“Nope.”

“You know,” she said, her tone so much softer that Debbie looked up at the switch, “you can, if you want to. Say something.”

“Excuse me?”

“If something’s bothering you. You can tell me.” When Debbie didn’t say anything, the wry smile came back. “Or you can keep quiet and do crime. Lady’s choice.”

“Who are you, and what have you done with my partner?” It didn’t come out sounding as light as it should.

“Five years is a long time.”

Debbie nodded. There it was again: the tight stomach and shallow breathing, the embarrassment, the conflict between hiding from Lou and running to her, covering her up. Debbie Ocean didn’t spend a lot of time feeling guilty, but this, she thought, this must be what that felt like.

Lou looked away from Debbie, crossed to a cupboard, pulled out a bag of rice. She took a pan from the stove. Beside the sink, she poured rice into the pan. Then she poured water into the rice, swirled them together, poured the water out. Delicately, with a finger there to keep the rice in the pan. She did it again, twice, with the same attention and care, the same precise motions of her hands. She covered the pan and lit the stove underneath it. This was a gift, an easing of the pressure. Debbie should accept it, speak, but all she could find was silence. She wanted to touch Lou, wrap around her, envelop and keep her. She folded her hands over her belly.

“All right,” said Lou. She took the cutting board of garlic and the knife from Debbie without looking up at her face. “If you’re not going to talk. Let me just tell you that I’m going to come back. Two weeks, maybe?” She produced an onion, went at it with the knife.

“Okay.” Debbie was good at talking. That was how she fed herself, and often Lou, by saying just what she had to to get what she wanted. It was beyond her now.

“Will you still be here?” Debbie didn’t recognize the tone in Lou’s voice. Didn’t analyze it.

“Yeah. Yeah.”

Lou nodded, partitioned the onion and garlic and empty space on the cutting board, and started on the tomatoes.

Debbie walked over behind her. Lou stayed bent over the cutting board. Debbie pressed her face into Lou’s neck. “I didn’t worry about you,” she said. Not more than the usual amount. Lou didn’t answer. “While I was inside. I thought you would be okay because. You were taking care of me.” If she could make time to ship in cigarettes, Debbie had reasoned, things must be all right.

Lou’s hands didn’t stop moving.

“I’ve been catching up,” Debbie continued. “On my worrying. Since I got out.” She wanted to press her lips to Lou’s neck. She debated.

There was a steam noise from the stove, and Lou went to turn down the burner under the rice. She stayed there looking at the stove for a minute. She turned around. Looked at Debbie’s hands. Didn’t say anything.

Neither one of them wanted to talk about it, apparently.

There were only two feet between them, if that. Debbie stepped forward into the gap and across it, not sure what she would do when she reached her partner. Lou put her hands on Debbie’s shoulders, ran them down her arms and back up her back, looked up at her lips, her eyes. Smiled. “I gotta get this food cooking, yeah?”

Debbie nodded, relieved to be back on familiar terms even as she wasn’t quite sure what was going on, where they stood, what would happen next. She mixed herself a martini, Lou a manhattan, out of habit: her usual contribution in the kitchen. Then she sat on the counter, moving her legs out of the way when Lou needed a lid. She was too nervous to make any of the obvious jokes about it. When Lou put the lid on the pan, she stopped moving. Picked up her drink and finished it. Pulled a bottle of whiskey out of a cupboard and poured some into the glass. Drank.

“It has been better,” she said. “Since you got back.”

Debbie had no idea what to do with this information.

“You know, it’s embarrassing to admit that. Very not punk rock.” She came over to stand in front of Debbie’s legs. Took another drink from the glass. Set it down. Debbie slid to the edge of the counter and pulled her legs apart, making room for Lou, who stepped in. It felt like forgiveness. Debbie tried to breathe. Lou had cracked the night open; she was pretty sure it was her turn now.

She slid carefully down from the counter. She wanted them on equal footing. “Can I—” she said, and Lou nodded. Debbie moved forward to kiss her mouth, chastely, forward to kiss her cheek, forward further into a hug. She bent her head so her lips rested on Lou’s neck

Lou pulled back and kissed her again. Debbie was still a little slow and off-balance from the honesty of the evening, and she kissed more softly than she might later. “Okay,” said Lou, “we can come back to this”—Debbie’s eyebrows went up, and Lou chuckled—“but weren’t you hungry?”

“I was,” Debbie said. “I am.”

**Author's Note:**

> I swear my high school self possessed my body and wrote this lmao: fic sponsored by the word "this" and pro drop


End file.
